


hitting the ground

by SpiritOfFox



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 3
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Always Female Jason Brody, BAMF Jason, Eventual Relationships, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Stream of Consciousness, Timeline What Timeline, Vaas Is His Own Warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-12 13:05:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7104751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpiritOfFox/pseuds/SpiritOfFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason and Grant escape from Vaas' pirates, but they get separated in the jungle. This is the story of Jason, as she tries to survive Rook Island without completely compromising her morals as Citra wages war on her brother... using Jason's older brother as her pawn this time. </p><p> Basically things go to shit for Jason and she has to find a way to get back her brothers and friends while the pirates and the Rakyat do their best to out-murder each other to rule the island.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. it goes//starts like this

**Author's Note:**

> So actually started playing FC3, and this thing happened. (Might have to use the Genderqueer tag later on. If there is later on.)
> 
> Also no beta or anyone so there is that too, sorry. :D

 

**It goes like this.**

Jason Brody, Grant Brody and Riley Brody with some of their friends decided to celebrate the youngest Brody getting their pilot license. They decided on going around Thailand and trying everything they deem fun with before they have to go back to their mostly boring real life in California and from then every one of them goes on their way to continue trudging through their existence.

They spend their days and nights partying and just generally having fun, until they meet Doug who convinces them to go to skydive to an island where they could do whatever they want. It actually didn’t take much convincing for them to agree and the next day they were already jumping out of a plane having grand old time.

Till they reached the ground.

Because that was when the pirates in red caught them and dragged them to their camp to be ransomed to their parents.

(To be sold into slavery actually, but they didn’t know that at the time.)

 

 ~~~

 

_This part in their new game of survival is actually a fixed point._

_They always ended up caught, sometimes all of them died, sometimes some of them were sold, and sometimes they all escaped._

_Change some variables and you end up with completely different outcomes._

_This time the settings themselves were quite different from the get-go and nobody on Rook Island was ready for the kind of changes it would end in._

 

 ~~~

 

**It starts like this.**

On 15th March in 1987 Jason Brody was born in Los Angeles and despite everyone and their mother telling since the 1st ultrasounds that they are going to have a son, in the sweaty and tired mother’s arms there is a baby girl. The proud parents and her big brother, Grant, are understandably flustered and trying to decide what to call her, because they had decided to call their baby Jason, but naming their daughter that would seem like an unnecessary cruel thing when they think about playgrounds and primary and high school.

Grant looked at his sister for a few minutes - he was a bit surprised actually because wasn’t he supposed to have a little brother – then he shrugged and went to find his grandparents out in the corridors to ask them whether girls would be up to play like boys were (his grandparents assured him that she might be when she was a bit older and less fragile).

In the end his parents named their daughter Ivy Brody.

It didn’t matter much, because it wasn’t like anyone at home called her that always. Her nickname was Jason most of the time and she didn’t mind it much (most of the time), sometimes even she introduced herself as Jason to others.

Later on some of their familial acquaintances thought the Brody’s had three sons and if it came up they were corrected… usually (this fact kind of wreaked havoc on her confidence when she was a teenager but several years later she was as settled in her skin as she could be).

Ivy was always a smart girl.  She liked sciences and math and with their family being made up of mostly career military members she was playing sports since she started to walk.

She did ballet for a few years as a kid, she tried rhythmic gymnastics, and she was part of their schools’ gymnastic teams until she was 12. Her focus on physical activities changed that year and she went on to be part of the athletics teams from then.

She regularly went with her brothers (by the time she was 4 Riley was born too) and their father to the shooting range, and when Grant decided that he will join the Army, she wasn’t very surprised. Their father were on and off deployed to various hot spots of the world and she would have been more surprised if Grant didn’t want to become military because he always idolized their father so there was that.

She was on the fence about joining for years by the time her older brother went off to boot camp, but she wasn’t sure about it despite the recruiters who regularly turned up around their school.

Then their father got blown up in some desert and she realized she didn’t want to be military if it meant that her family would be left behind when she would have eventually died while following some crackpot’s orders who had never been out on the field.

(Their mother almost broke but she pulled through in the end.)

So with some trepidation (because joining the Army has always been a given in their household) she decided to take school more seriously and do better than ever in her AP classes.

 

 ~

 

University tuition was expensive, medical school was very expensive (despite trying to get as many scholarships and whatnot as she possibly could) and with their father dead and her not wanting anything with military, she went to UCLA where she was a premed student.

Riley decided that he wanted to be a pilot and even Grant started coming home more and more.

She finished her undergrad degree and she score 42 out of 45 on her MCAT examination. She was of course terribly loaded down with coursework once she was in actual medical school but somehow she trudged on with minimal amount of breakdowns.

Riley graduated and started pilot training. They joked around that at least he wouldn’t need his big sister to beat up bullies on the playground anymore (well, that was a running joke since she had been 10 and her little brother attracted almost every kind of bully living in their neighbourhood). Grant made her promise that she would start some kind of martial arts training.

Time flew by and she finally fulfilled that promise as she started classes in Krav Maga a few months before Riley got his license. Joke was on her because Krav Maga training is brutal and she shouldn’t have stopped her training (competitive level athleticism) when she was elbows deep in her premed studies, but it’s no use crying over spilt milk and she wouldn’t exactly need to know how to disarm someone with a gun or knife while being a doctor… actually that wasn’t such a bad thing all things considered but it didn’t seem that vitally important when she was trying to relax her strained muscles after another training (torture) session.

Their friends from UCLA were trying to iron out details about Riley’s celebration vacation, so she tried to be as supportive as she could be even if she really didn’t want to go to Thailand.

Grant arrived home with no fanfare and the 4 of them went out to celebrate their youngest’s success two days before all of them were sitting on an airplane flying over the Pacific Ocean to do crazy things because they were young and everyone told them that that was the time to do crazy things in their life.

So they went to Thailand and they had fun, partying, tanning on beaches, sightseeing, jumping off shit and climbing things and whatnot. They joked around and enjoyed their vacation.

Then while they were in a nightclub in Bangkok they met a guy named Doug.

Next day they went skydiving over Rook Island.

After that she wasn’t sure what happened, but she woke up in a bamboo cage with Grant tied up in front of her and an unfamiliar male voice speaking outside their cage.

„You boys think you're crazy, huh? Jumping out of airplanes...  _flying like birds?”_

The guy chuckled and she wondered for a few seconds… did that meant that they didn’t realize that she was a woman? (Which okay that felt debatable on some days, and she was kind of flat and she was relatively tall and her hair had been cut short recently because there was a lice epidemic in the hospital where she helped out and she might be wearing boyish clothes, but _really_?) Was that why she was in one cage with Grant and not the other girls?

 „That is crazy! I like this phone. This is a nice fucking phone.”

Where were the others actually? She tried to surreptitiously move her head around to check whether she saw any of their friends but there was nobody she recognized at first glance.

“So, what do we have here? Grant... and Jason... from California, huh? Well, I hope your mama and papa really, really love you, cause you two white boys look expensive! And that's good because I like expensive things...”

The fucker had her phone and he was flicking through it and how the hell did he knew their names? And did that really mean that they didn’t know that Jason was a nickname, granted every one of her friends called her that like even on the video he just watched, but still they didn’t find her wallet with her ID cards or something?  

“I'm sorry, what did you say? What did you say? Do you want me to slice you open like I did to your friend? SHUT THE FUCK UP! Okay? I'm the one with the fucking dick! Look at me, look me in the fucking eye. HEY! YOU FUCK! Look me in the eye.  **You're my bitch. I rule this fucking kingdom.**  Shut the fuck up... or you die.”

Of course Grant has to go and antagonize their seemingly unhinged captor, if her mouth wasn’t full of fabric she would have sighed loudly because that was fucking Grant for you, always being the manliest man to ever man and this whole pissing contest between these two is going to get ugly as fuck, she could already see that if they somehow remained alive.  

 _“_ What is it, Jason?” while she mused about Grant she must have released some kind of noise because their kidnapper turned his attention to her and that was slightly terrifying actually.

“Jason, what is it? Why aren't you laughing now like you did back there? What, is this not fun anymore?”

Okay, she had to concede, he was a lot more terrifying when his focus turned on you.

“Have I failed to entertain you? You see, thing is, up there, you thought you had a chance. Waaaay up in the fucking skies, you thought you had your finger on the pussy trigger. But hermano, down here... down here?” for a few seconds she couldn’t tear her attention away from the falling sand and she could feel his eyes on her like they were some kind of laser pointers. “ _You hit the ground.”_

She gulped and she knew that Grant knew that she was terrified out of her mind and he was going to do something stupid and she had to stop him somehow and she was going to hyperventilate and they were going to die and their mother would kill herself and where was Riley, her baby brother and…

A man called their captor’s attention away and he stood up and ambled towards the new guy while only leaving one guard behind. There was some kind of moving in her peripherals and Grant had his hand free and soon he was next to her freeing her and trying to calm her down with quick soothing touches and then he told her to call the guard while they pretended their hands were still tied.

Then he proceeded to bash the guy’s head repeatedly into the door of their cages, possibly killing him.

(Probably killing him, but she didn’t check even if her hands fluttered around him for a second, but Grant was already moving and she didn’t want to be left behind.)

So they started sneaking through the camp, they almost got caught once or twice, like the time with those freaking hounds starting barking and where they had to divert the guard’s attention (literally throwing rocks, what even their life became? I mean really, using rocks as diversion, like this was some kind of cheap videogame?)

She climbed through the window Grant opened up and there was a guy in the cabin and he woke up at the thump and he started yelling, but Grant killed him with throwing a knife into his neck and what fuck was happening?

“Oh god Grant, I can’t do this, I can’t, I can’t…” she started to say almost hysterically and she knew that this wasn’t the time to start panicking but she couldn’t help it.

Grant moved to stand before her to cover the still bleeding body of the man he just murdered and he caught her face in a soft grip forcing her eyes to move away from the morbid sight and look into his eyes as he started to croon softly at her.

“Jay, Jay… Look at me sweetheart. I can’t do this without you, I can’t find Riley and the others without your help Ivy, we have to get out from here, so you have to calm down, okay?”

She flushed and mumbled something affirmative and a quiet sorry for losing her cool in such a way, Grant then quickly kissed her on her forehead before straightening up.

The next few minutes which felt like hours to her were spent crouching, climbing and moving as fast as she was able to while she had to remain as silent as possible, because they were hostiles in the room they slipped into through the window (they found a map, and a radio and other useful shit in one of the cabins) or they were guarding plants (marihuana probably, did they somehow manage to stumble upon some kind of drug plantation or laboratory or what?) or they were driving around in large humwees and then they were in a tunnel under the fortifications probably and almost out.

She caught Grant’s hands and stopped him from moving out the small hole into the jungle she could see outside. “What are we gonna do?”

“We shouldn’t talk here.” he whispered back, as he quickly took out the map. “At least here we are somehow protected while out there we would be in plain sight.”

“Where are the others?” she asked while trying to make sense of the map.

“It isn’t marked, we probably have to find another way to get that information.”

“Then we should get as far away from here as possible.” she decided as Grant put the map back into his pocket. She nodded towards to the hole before them. “Start running as soon as we are though that.”

Grant stuck out his head checked the perimeter, then both of them climbed out plastering themselves to the palisade. “Just like in college at 3, okay?”

“One…”

She dropped into stance.

“Two…”

Whispering he mirrored her, their muscles slowly flexing in their body.

On the quiet “Three!” both of them were sprinting towards the treeline with single-minded focus, flying through the obstacles provided by the jungle: the roots, the bushes, the rocks, the trees and everything else.

Behind their backs loud shouts started up and she could hear that guy and she started picking up speed to lose that voice. “… You want to fuck with me? I mean, you come here, with your... with your pretty-boy face, right, and your pretty-boy phone, your dimwit brother, and you want to fuck with me… I respect that…”

Okay, that probably meant that they thought that she was a guy, which was good to know but she should probably concentrate completely on running before she broke her neck while tripping on a root or something. Thankfully both Grant and she were in good condition physically so neither of them seemed to run out of air or anything.

“… if the jungle doesn't eat you up alive, **I will.** ”

And the guy was shouting so loud that she felt like the hounds of hell were after them. Wait no. Those were those damn hounds that almost sniffed them out when they were sneaking through the camp.

Grant let out a heartfelt fuck as beside the barking of the dogs they could hear those blasted humwees behind them and the occasional pepper of shooting too.

They were running, then they were not running anymore because there wasn’t any ground under them on which they could run and they were sliding down the hill and then the slide ended too and they ended up falling a few meters to the ground and both of them blacked out in the mud.

 

 ~

 

(Grant actually woke up after few critically important minutes which shouldn’t have been wasted like this and he looked around for his sister who was lying close to him with her head bleeding because she hit a rock and she wouldn’t wake up and Grant grabbed her and carried her away to a tunnel.)

 

~

 

Hours later she woke up to a leaf in her mouth, because somehow she ended up in the dark with mud and foliage and other unmentionable things covering her from head to toe and her head was actually hurting kinda bad.

It took her a few minutes focusing her vision and she remembered everything, the shouting guy, the cage, Grant, their escape.

But there was no one in the tunnel with her and it didn’t matter how much she strained her ears there was no other noise aside her breathing. She saw boot prints in the mud which went towards her left so she started to quietly move with her hands on the walls. Everything in her body ached somehow ferociously, but she had to trudge on because she was sitting ducks in there and she had to look around her hiding place.

She smelt blood.

Next to the entrance she found a guy in red with a hunting knife sticking out of his neck, and the sun was already up.

That means that several hours have passed since they woke up in that cage and escaped. That means that she couldn’t wait for Grant anymore, because their kidnappers probably knew everything about the surrounding area of their camp, so they probably knew about that tunnel too, so it was just her luck that they haven’t found her while she was unconscious.

She still should leave something to her brother in case he came back. She found some branches and made a small sign in the tunnel a few feet from the entrance.

(IVY ->)

She thought about leaving something behind but she didn’t have anything she could spare if she wanted to have a chance. It was already bad enough that the radio and the map was with Grant and she didn’t know where he was.

(Was he alive or did he get shot or captured or anything?)

She started sneaking through the jungle, watching and waiting in case she heard voices or saw red-red shirts.

But not before she took the knife from the corpse’s neck and stripped it of its shirt and pants.

(They couldn’t be called clean or even just mildly stained, but it was better than nothing and she would probably need the fabric at some point.)

She could only hope that one day she would see her mother again.

 

 ~~~

 

  ** _(She wouldn’t.)_**

 

_~~~_

 


	2. it continues like this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Survival in a jungle really depends on your luck.  
> 
> 
> And how quickly you can find the necessary resources for your survival. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a somehow slow chapter and please excuse my English. I'm not a native speaker and no beta means that even if I've read it through a few times before posting I'll slip up a lot. :)  
> 
> 
> (Note: I'm not sure I went about it the right way, but when you see something in brackets - those are supposed to be still Jay's thoughts. Just the slightly more disturbing ones, that she doesn't really want to acknowledge. Except the italicized and bolded ones in the end, because that's me being a cryptic shit.) 

**It continues like this.**

**(Survival in a jungle.)**

Ivy ran through several obstacle courses during her days in undergrad. She was always striving to run them faster, to jump higher and quicker than before. It wasn’t even about being competitive, but rather the feeling of doing better, to have her muscles burn and experience that rush when she knew she did something better than ever.

To stretch her own limits, to break them and reshape them into something new.

(To improve herself piece by piece.) 

 

~~~

 

Sometimes when running, even if they were in danger, the mind can wander into strange places instead of paying even more attention to their surroundings.

It could be called a survival mechanism. Or dangerous inattention.

It really depends on how lucky they are.

 

~

 

She remembered some half-forgotten facts from her classes in school about some of the jungle living animals and their biology, but she was never exactly interested in them to look up those facts or just read up about them beyond the general concepts. She knew some of their names and whether they were carnivores or not. She never had a horse or dolphin obsession when she was a kid, she liked dinosaurs, but those weren’t an immediate concern (she hoped she didn’t skydive into real-life Jurassic Park) and she’d always liked flowers and plants a bit more than most animals.

They had a large garden at home filled to the brim with vegetables and herbs and trees, because her mother took to gardening after she became a reservist while raising her and her brothers. They never had a dog because of the plants (and because Riley was terrified of them since he was a child and he was chased by one on their street) but they regularly fed some of their neighbours’ cats.

So all in all, she never really had a pet at home which made her moody as a teen because she wanted a dog or a cat or even a hamster, but her mother always said no. She was not sure she wanted dogs anymore, but that could change if she ever got away from the island and those pirates’ bloodthirsty hounds. Maybe she would reconsider in a few years down the road when this whole adventure was just a bad memory of her past.

At the moment as she sprinted from tree to tree (from cover to cover), she felt only the slowly draining adrenaline in her veins and could only think about the fact that she should have looked up more about Thailand’s native animals because she sure as hell could have used that knowledge ever since they’ve escaped from that camp.

She had some near misses in the last few hours with the local wildlife, like the fucking (venomous) snake on the ground she had heard hissing for several seconds before it attacked her, yet she still managed to almost step on it and get bitten and let’s not forget the fright it gave her to have something fast like that honestly flying towards her like that.

Or the freaking Komodo dragon she luckily avoided when it didn’t notice her standing near it.

Or the boars which made her remember all those stories she had ever read about people being gored by them. At least there weren’t any moose here or deer. Their antlers and hooves probably killed many more than people would think. She really hoped that there weren’t any here.

There were also a lot of mosquitoes, but thankfully the mud covering her skin prevented a lot of their bites. She might even get away without getting some kind of Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever or Malaria. Of course ideally she should have built a fire to keep them away, but not knowing where her pursuers were she couldn’t risk that (also the almost constant running would be an obstacle in that too). And she wasn’t even sure that even with the lighter she could coax a fire into life, because everything was quite humid.

She really needed more knowledge about the native flora and fauna, because she thought she was prepared for everything when she checked onto their plane when they started their celebrative holiday, but everything seemed to want to prove her wrong.

She knew that the lack of knowledge about your surroundings usually killed faster than stray bullets.

There was the distinct possibility that she would die days before her captors could recapture her, just because of her decision to try to get farther away from them in this accursed place.

 

~

 

The average human body can hold out without food for several days.

Water… well, water is trickier.

On the average 65% of a human’s body is made of water. Of course depending on age, gender and differing body composition that could range from 45% to 73%. So if you take a woman who is around 125 pounds that would mean that between 56 and 91 pounds are completely water in her body.

(So if you take water density and whatnot, that’s roughly what? Between 25 and 41 litres of that stuff in various forms.)

Even if we don’t take into account bathroom visits, the human body is constantly losing some of that water with sweating and breathing. In extreme conditions (like the humid heat of a jungle, like the stress of fleeing their kidnappers who were shooting at them) it wasn’t out of the normal to sweat out more than a litre per hour, and that means that dehydration can be a really dangerous thing in the longer run.

So when your survival is on the line you have to find some kind of water source really soon.

Ivy saw puddles of water on the ground, she saw large leaves of plants weighted down with water and then she saw a small stream running before her. It seemed clear, so if she found its spring she could use the water. She followed it and tried not to think of bacteria and toxic contaminants and viruses, and she tried to forget that usually water sources like this attracted animals and human settlements too. She needed water and felt sweat dripping down her forehead.

“Thank fuck.” she tried to whisper when she found the spring devoid of anyone and anything other than her, but her throat was scratchy with thirst so it came out as jumbled syllables mostly.

She drank her fill and she didn’t have any containers with her to take some of the water but she managed to clean the blood from her face and managed to do a quick perfunctory check of her body.

She weighted whether she should clean her wound with the water (pros were: cleaning it out could stop infection, cons were: the water wasn’t sterile and she could actually cause more trouble for herself) and she hoped that she would eventually find medical help or supplies, but beggars can’t be choosers so cleaning it out with fresh water was it. It didn’t feel inflamed when she touched it with her thoroughly washed hands and she sliced a small slip from the red shirt she was carrying with her to possibly use as a rag after she carefully washed that too.

Her head stopped really bleeding hours ago, she didn’t have any of the usual signs so she didn’t think that she had any kind of concussion or internal bleeding in there. Of course that didn’t really mean that she was safe, because she probably needed medical treatment, but not like she had an access to a hospital (or anything really sterilized) right there in the middle of the jungle. Still, almost every one of her limbs hurt and she was covered in black and blue bruises under her shirt and jeans.

No leeches or ticks as she could see.

No tears in her clothes so far, so that was a really good thing too.

No blood from skinned knees, but her clothes were kind of still covered in mud and other things (like sweat and blood).

The sweat on her skin made her remember the fact that Jungle Rot had to be considered too, but she probably had some time before that happened, so she could get to somewhere safer before tackling that.

She needed to find a place where she could camp and plan.

She also needed to find supplies, weapons and she needed to find them fast.

 

~

 

She went to sleep high up, between the large branches or a giant tree she could scale with some of those dangling vines she cut down. The dead guy’s knife was becoming very useful in her survival.

It wasn’t very comfortable but at least she was far-far away from the creepy crawlers and the animals who might have wanted to eat her, or the possible lucky pirate who could find her while she slept away.

She found a few banana trees in a small clearing and while she wasn’t completely sure about the fruit as it wasn’t ripe, she still took some of it and some of the stem with her too. She munched on those after cleaning away the inedible parts and settled down for a few hours of fitful sleep.

She woke up a little bit before dawn and watched the sky while the sun rose. It was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen in her life.

“It wasn’t worth it.” she repeatedly mumbled to herself as she checked around the tree, as she waited to see whether anything moved under her, as she climbed back to the ground to continue on her way.

She had been walking for some time now with the occasional sprint peppering it if the need arose and she didn’t found any sign of a camp or habitation or anything. On the upside she also didn’t run into any of those guys in red which was a really good thing and probably meant that she was leaving the camp behind and possibly their territory too.

She really hoped the whole island wasn’t theirs because she was utterly fucked then.

She hadn’t been sure about that because the one glance she got at the map (she hoped it was still with Grant, because that would mean that he was alive and probably uncaptured) back at their kidnappers’ camp seemed kind of useless at the moment without any references. And not like she memorized it or had much experience with navigating like that. She only knew that she was moving somewhat in the direction of North because of the occasional patch of moss that she saw, but that actually wasn’t much of a reassurance. All she knew for sure that even if she walked into another red shirt camp she wouldn’t know before they noticed her.

And if they had some of those heat seeking cameras or motion sensors or any other technology like that then she was utterly fucked then too.

The best case was that she didn’t run into any of their possibly (probably) existing other camps.

Her luck held out so far.

 

~

 

Around the time she started to feel really thirsty again she saw a break in the treeline before her. They started to thin out considerably around her and she didn’t even notice.

She could have sworn that something was glinting there, like it was reflecting light.

That realization made her freeze in her tracks, because metal could mean camp. Or it could mean the muzzle of a gun. Or even another camp of their captors.

It could have also meant safety and water.

First aid kits or doctors.

It could have also meant people who weren’t wearing red shirts.

All of this ran through her mind in the few seconds she hid herself behind one of the trees. The fact that nobody shot at her could mean that she wasn’t noticed or that they weren’t red shirts there or even that she was starting to hallucinate from the stress and everything.

She waited a few minutes there, straining to hear anything aside from the usual jungle sounds she got used to. But there was nothing, just silence.

She thought about calling out, but what if there really was someone out there?

What if someone really answered her call?

What if there was a redshirt camp there despite the uncommon silence and she called all of them down on her head just because she was being naïve?

She looked around for a climbable tree and used the vine she previously cut and used to climb up once again into the canopy to check out things.

She sit there in her muddy shoes and muddy pants and muddy everything and simultaneously swore in her head for getting her hopes up about possible help and thanking whatever higher deity she could think of for not running into a redshirt camp.

The place before her has obviously been some kind of dwelling at some point, but nobody had been visiting for a long time if the rate of the jungle’s retaking it could be used as a reference point. There were some huts made from what she thought was metal scrap and there might have been some wood in there and… chicken wire? Huh. The whole place looked like an outpost that was hastily cobbled together from whatever they could find to have some marginal protection against the elements.

There were no animals she could see and no movement either, so she deemed it safe enough to check out the place, hoping that she could find something useful in there.

Even if the chances of that seemed really low seeing how abandoned everything looked.

She tiptoed around the small camp, checking whether any of the buildings were intact and safer to enter. There were only three, two of them looked ready to collapse, but the largest one seemed somehow promising. She still ducked into the other two first after listening for a few moments for snakes so she didn’t surprise one which could have nested in there.

She found some containers, but they were containing either rotted food or were already broken into and emptied of anything that could be used. Ivy sighed and headed to the last building.

There was an intact door and that actually made her take notice and straighten out of her slouch. She tried to open it gently at first, but it wouldn’t budge till she put her whole weight behind her attempts, which made the hinges squeak really loud which almost caused her a heart attack. She snapped her head around checking to see the jungle but it was still mostly quiet and there didn’t seem to be anything that heard her and wanted to eat her/murder her. She chuckled lowly and went inside with her knife in her hand when she could squeeze through the opening.

It was one level, she couldn’t see any doors or anything that could mean that it had a basement and there was nobody inside aside from her. The walls were peppered with growing vines here and there but they were mostly intact. There wasn’t much furniture either but she saw a bed which seemed to beckon her. She knew she couldn’t really afford the chance that this place might see visitors but she seriously started to contemplate sleeping there that night, but before making that decision she had to check the hut, whether there were anything she could use here.

She looked under the cot and found some crates which contained some actually useful things. She was the proud owner now of an empty flask and some blankets. She also found a first aid kit in the corner which made her very very happy as she quickly disinfected her wound (it had already scabbed over, but she had to make sure) and shucked off her clothes to deal with insect bites and other scrapes. No ulcers though so that was good, so she took off her underwear and every layer she didn’t need to protect her skin from the elements, not taking the chance that they would start to form on her skin.

She even found some bottled water and dry food, so she took some of that too. She made sure that the absence of the flask, the blanket, the water and everything couldn’t be noticed at first look by shuffling everything around a bit. She put everything she didn’t need back into the first aid kit and she put her clothes back on.

She dragged out an ugly canvas bag from one of the opened crates and started to pile her old and new things into it.

This place was well stocked with supplies which meant that it wasn’t abandoned, which meant that it was probably a safe house of some kind, which meant that it wasn’t safe for **her** to stay there.

She shouldered her new bag, waited at the door for a few seconds listening to the sounds for anything out of the norm and she rechecked the hut again. There wasn’t really a floor so the mud from her shoes wasn’t too noticeable, but she would have to sweep with a few leaves to make sure inside and outside too to make her shoeprints disappear. Otherwise everything seemed to be back in their place and there wasn’t really large glaring sign that said ‘AN INTRUDER WAS HERE’ so it was probably safe to leave.

Pity, she really wanted to sleep in a bed for the night.

 

~

 

She walked for a few hours before the sun started to drop again. She estimated that she put some distance between her and the pirates, and she wasn’t being pursued which made her somewhat relieved and clench with worry at the same time, because that might have meant that Grant was pursued instead, which boded well for her chances if they had to concentrate their assets and resources on locating him then they wouldn’t get on her case too much probably, but it also meant that Grant was in more danger. Which he was more equipped to deal with his training, but still.

She wanted to find him and make sure that he was unharmed.

The whole not being pursued could also mean that she was written off as already dead. Maybe they thought something ate her or that she broke her neck in a ditch somewhere and something ate her corpse.

Both could be the reason, she supposed as she walked through the jungle, with the occasional stops to gather fruit, plants she recognized or other things she could use. Sometimes she even found crates lying here and there that contained things that could be used if she ever found civilization which didn’t immediately wanted to capture her or kill her.

They didn’t take too much space and their weight was insignificant so she was content to collect cards and necklaces and whatever she found.

When the sun started to dip low she found a tall tree and she climbed up and up till she found the highest branches that could support her whole weight for the night with the bag and all.

Playing blanket burrito she watched the sky through the leaves and went to sleep with her knife in her hands as the night life of the jungle started up around and under her.

 

~

 

Once again several hours later she was up early with the sun and she continued on her way after a small breakfast of the food found yesterday and checking whether she got bitten by something during the night or any other irregularities on her skin. Nothing tried to murder her and she suddenly had flashes back to her school days years ago when she went on some trip with her classmates.

She shouldn’t really compare this whole thing to those but without actually seeing her pursuers she started to feel kind of less stressed and aside from the whole trying to survive the jungle thing she was actually doing okay so far. She had water, she had a knife, she had some dry food if she couldn’t find something edible, she wasn’t injured and she felt almost rested.

She was doing much better than when she woke up in that tunnel alone.

To be honest, she should have known that eventually her enormous luck would run out, but even then it could have happened in a way worse way.

Because after a few hours of walking she started to hear new noises and soon enough she could see a settlement in the distance from the canopy of a tree.

She needed to get closer to make sure, but she didn’t saw large amount of red, so she was tempted to observe them before deciding on whether she should avoid them or try to make contact. There might be a chance that they were the natives of the island, but it was also possible that they either work for the pirates or that they were in contact with them.

Or they might be amiable to ally with her eventually and she could get supplies from them.

Maybe even directions or something.

It was worth a closer look.

 

~~~

 

**_(Years later on she would be grateful for that camp, because they really helped her start to see things differently than she thought she ever would.)_ **

 

~~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this story and thank you for the kudos (I still can't believe I got kudos). :)  
> I'll try to write it to be somehow more interesting and more cohesive as I go and as Jay slowly gets out of her shell-shock. I'm going to try my best to finish this (or get out whatever I plotted), that I can promise. Next update will probably happen next Sunday, I guess?
> 
> Also still in the middle of exam time. Soil science was a success, but I failed my 1st Biochem exam because I messed up the dates and studied for a complete different subject instead. I'm an idiot, that's all I can say. :D 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to keep Jason/Ivy somehow in character, but taking into account the changed circumstances and the fact that Jason can be very much like a blank slate for the gamer to project themselves on... Like I was going for more serious and less possibility for immaturity, I guess?
> 
> Also headcanoning the shit out of this fic, if I continue, which is currently a toss up bc it's exam-time! Like in a few hours I'm writing one in soil science, so might not come out anything from this.


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